Robert Ford's Blog

Robert Ford came to 610 Sports Radio in 2009 as the station’s “Royals Insider.” He currently serves as the pre and post game show host for Royals Broadcasts on 610. The Syracuse graduate has been around professional baseball as a reporter and broadcaster for over a decade.

Royals Spring Training Report for Wed, 2/29

by Robert Ford,posted Feb 29 2012 6:29PM

There always comes a point in spring training when everyone’s tired of working out and ready for competition, and I think the Royals have reached that point. Today’s workout was about 90 minutes shorter than the last several have been, largely because there weren’t six or seven pitchers throwing live batting practice, which takes up a good chunk of time. Tomorrow is the first of two intrasquad games for the Royals. More than anything, intrasquad games are designed to give the pitchers more work. Intrasquad games are in a controlled atmosphere – once a pitcher reaches his pitch count, the inning’s over, even if there are less than three outs – but they’re still closer to real competition than the workouts are. The Royals will also play an intrasquad game on Friday before they open the exhibition slate Sunday against the Texas Rangers in Surprise.

The Royals have been bringing Jonathan Sanchez along slowly because his spot in the rotation is secure and his 2011 season with the San Francisco Giants ended prematurely because of an ankle injury. However, he did throw a brief session of live batting practice today. It looked like Sanchez struggled with his command a little bit – not surprising for any pitcher in his first live BP session – but I was encouraged by the fact that everything was down. Sanchez has struggled with control his entire Major League career, but he gives up less than a hit per inning while striking out more than a batter an inning, so the walks don’t hurt him as much as they hurt other pitchers. What you don’t want is for those walks to turn into big innings because they’re followed by extra-base hits; if Sanchez keeps the ball down, even when he misses, that will make it easier for him to overcome the free passes, since pitches down in the zone aren’t as likely to be hit a long way.